Steve McQueen's Ferrari 275 GTB4 restored

Ferrari Classiche recently took delivery of a 275 GTB4 that originally belonged to movie legend, Steve McQueen who took delivery of the car in San Francisco while on the set of Bullitt.

The new owner brought the car to Ferrari Classiche for the company's authenticity certification process, knowing that at some time during the 1980s, when under previous ownership, the car had been converted to a Spider.

A Ferrari can only be authenticated if it is to exactly the same specifications as when it left the factory so to this end, the new owner decided to return the car to its original coupé form and asked Ferrari Classiche to undertake the restoration reproducing the roof and buttresses with hand-beaten steel panels.

It seems that classic Ferraris continue to be a sound investment as Business Week recently reported on a 250 GTO built for Stirling Moss fetching a world record $35 million in a private treaty sale.

The record sale coincides with the 50th anniversary of the launch in 1962 of the Ferrari homologation special (hence the designation Gran Turismo Omologata), of which just 36 examples were built. The 250 GTO capped a series of victories in GT racing in the early 1960s, with three consecutive Manufacturers' titles in 1962, '63 and '64.

Ferrari's direct involvement, with its dedicated department providing certificates of authenticity which testify to the originality of a car, has contributed to the interest in classic Ferraris in recent years.

Set up in 2006, Ferrari Classiche has to date processed over 3,300 certification requests using the company's exhaustive archive records and original designs.